FIG. 1 shows a schematic diagram of a reference architecture of a general network. As shown in FIG. 1, the general network includes a customer premises network (CPN: Customer Premises Network), an access network and a service provider (SP: Service Provider). A customer premises network may be connected with an access network, and includes a user equipment (UE: User Equipment) and a residential gateway (RG: Residential Gateway). An access network includes an access node (AN: Access Node), a network edge node (EN: Edge Node) and an aggregation network located between the AN and the network EN. A SP may be connected with an access network, which may be an application SP (ASP: Application SP) or a network SP (NSP: Network SP). When a user equipment in a premises network intends to access a network and connects with a service provider to acquire a desired service, one network edge node in an access network will be assigned to serve the UE.
A general network may be a wireless network, a digital subscriber line (DSL: Digital Subscriber Line) network or a passive optical network (PON: Passive Optical Network). If a general network is a wireless network, a network edge node in an access network is a wireless gateway, and an access node in an access network is a base station (BS: Base Station). If a general network is a DSL network, a network edge node in an access network may be a broadband remote access server (BRAS: Broadband Remote Access Server), a broadband network gateway (BNG: Broadband Network Gateway) or a broadband service gateway (BSG: Broadband Service Gateway). An access node in an access network is a digital subscriber line access multiplexer (DSLAM: DSL Access Multiplexer). A premises network is inter-connected with a DSL network by a DSL access technology. If a general network is a PON, a network edge node in an access network is a BRAS or a BNG. An access node in an access network is an optical line termination (OLT: Optical Line Termination). A premises network is inter-connected with an access network by a passive optical network access technology.
Traditionally, a centralized deployment mode is adopted for network edge nodes of an access network. Namely, the network edge nodes are centrally deployed on an aggregation network of the access network which is far away from a user equipment, so that each network edge node may serve more areas. However, this centralized deployment mode of network edge nodes needs to consume more bandwidth of metropolitan area network, which causes a bottleneck of a network performance, and which is not favorable for deploying new services such as a content delivery network (CDN: Content Delivery Network) as such new services require a network edge node gets closer to a user equipment.
In order to overcome the above-mentioned defects of the centralized deployment mode, a distributed deployment mode is adopted for network edge nodes of an access network at present. Namely, the network edge nodes are moved down and distributedly deployed to an aggregation network of the access network. By adopting a distributed deployment mode, served area of each network edge node in an access network is decreased, but is closer to a user equipment, thereby being better for a deployment of new services and a promotion of bandwidth of a user equipment.
However, there also exists a problem when adopting a distributed deployment mode for deploying network edge nodes in an access network. Specifically, suppose that a network edge node B1 serves an urban area and a network edge node B2 serves a suburb. During the daytime, most the people go to work from the suburb area to the urban area. Therefore most people enter a network through the network edge node B1, and few people enter a network through the network edge node B2. As a result, a load of the network edge node B1 is very high, and the requirement for the capacity of the network edge node B1 is correspondingly very high in order to bear a pressure from a peak value of a service. And a load of the network edge node B2 is very low, which is equivalent that the network edge node B2 is idle during the daytime. Conversely, at night, people go back to the suburb area from the urban area. Thus a lot of people enter the network through the network edge node B2, and few people enter the network through the network edge node B1. As a result, the load of the network edge node B2 is very high, and the requirement for the capacity of the network edge node B2 is correspondingly very high to bear the pressure from the peak value of a service. And the load of the network edge node B1 is very low, which is equivalent that the network edge node B1 is idle at night. The foregoing description is a tidal effect of people as to a network use.
Apparently, when network edge nodes in an access network are deployed by adopting a distributed deployment mode, a network edge node in the access network which has a low utilization rate, requires a high capacity due to the tidal effect of people as to a network use.